In an effort to call attention to the present-day consequences of global warming, President Obama is soon to embark on a journey that no president has taken before.

Not only will he set foot in the Alaskan Arctic, at the very edge of the state, but he will spend more time on the ground in Alaska than any president has ever done. Typically, Alaska is a refueling stop for Air Force One when traveling to and from Asia.

Obama's three-day trip to Anchorage, Seward, Dillingham and Kotzebue, Alaska, which begins August 31, will allow the President to raise the profile of Arctic policy and global warming. It may also provide iconic images of the President in front of rapidly receding glaciers and eroding coastal villages, bolstering his case for climate action.

The Arctic is warming more rapidly than any other region on Earth, with receding summer sea ice leading to a positive feedback loop that warms the air and ocean and melts still more ice. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Arctic has been warming at twice the rate of anywhere else on Earth.

Alaska average temperature departures from average for January to July 2015 compared to past years. The blue line shows the long-term trend.

Image: NOAA/NCEI

On land, melting permafrost is allowing more planet-warming greenhouse gases to seep into the atmosphere. At sea, there is increased access for shipping, natural resource drilling and military activities.

In the Fairbanks area there is a phenomenon known as "drunken forests" and "drunken homes", where trees and buildings are leaning at odd angles because the previously frozen soil they rested in is softening up as average temperatures climb.

“The Arctic is unraveling,” said Rafe Pomerance, a member of the Polar Research Board and chair of Arctic 21, a coalition of groups lobbying for action on climate change and other Arctic matters.

In a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, Pomerance pointed to the melting of Alaska's glaciers as evidence of the swift-moving impacts of global warming in that state. “They are melting very fast and will be a very big part of sea level rise this century," Pomerance said of Alaska's glaciers and those in other parts of the Arctic.

Pomerance thinks Obama's trip to the Arctic could be a turning point in the debate over climate science and policy. “The Arctic is such a compelling story," he said. "Once people start paying attention to it, I think the debate changes."

Annual average temperature anomalies for the globe, in red, vs. the Arctic, in blue.

Image: Arctic Report Card 2014

It is against this backdrop of rapid climate change that Obama will arrive in the Frontier State on August 31, when he will address high-level policy makers from the nine Arctic nations and a host of others that have growing interests in the region. These countries include Singapore, China, Korea, France, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, Poland, India and Singapore, according to Karen Fliorini, the State Department's deputy special envoy for climate.

Secretary of State John Kerry will also speak at the meeting, which is known as the "Conference on Global Leadership in the Arctic," or GLACIER conference, and the State Department is expecting about a dozen other foreign ministers to attend, plus scientists and civil society groups. Obama is slated to give the closing address at the meeting, Fliorini said on a conference call with reporters on Tuesday.

This would mark the highest-ever level engagement from the U.S. government in Arctic affairs. Typically, only senior-level career diplomats, and occasionally the secretary of state, attends Arctic policy meetings.

With less than three months to go before a crucial round of U.N. climate negotiations in Paris, though, the White House is taking advantage of any opportunity it can get to raise the profile of climate change as a pressing issue for the U.S., and the administration's agenda for reducing global warming pollutants such as carbon dioxide and methane.

Alaska is ground zero in U.S. for global warming

No state is feeling the affects of climate change more than Alaska. And yet no state has such a vested interest in the continued production and consumption of fossil fuels. This duality will present the White House with some thorny questions during Obama's visit.

Peer-reviewed research published in the past several years has shown that what is happening in the Arctic, including the Alaskan Arctic, has repercussions in the lower 48 states, in the form of jet stream undulations that contribute to extreme weather events.

An activist watches while hanging from the St. Johns bridge as the Royal Dutch Shell PLC icebreaker Fennica turns around in Portland, Oregon, Thursday, July 30, 2015.

Image: Don Ryan/Associated Press

This research is still on the cutting edge, with many climate scientists and meteorologists still skeptical that sea ice loss and Arctic warming is altering weather patterns so far outside the Arctic. Still, the expression "what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic" has now become part of the administration's argument for acting to limit global warming.

For many years, Alaska was the top oil producing state, with the productive oil fields of Prudhoe Bay providing jobs and revenue for the state. But with the rapid rise of unconventional oil drilling in states such as North Dakota and Oklahoma, and recent collapse in global oil prices, has left the state facing a $3.5 billion budget deficit.

According to Alaska Dispatch, 90% of the state government's discretionary spending comes from oil revenue.

Walker is a strong advocate for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to provide jobs and help fill the state's coffers. The Obama administration opposes such drilling, drawing the charge from Walker and other Alaska lawmakers that the White House is “declaring war on Alaska’s future” by blocking oil and gas drilling there.

“We have an excellent pipeline in Alaska, except it is three-quarters empty,” Walker said at a press conference on Tuesday. “So I’ll talk to him about what we need to do to put more oil in the pipeline.”

Walker also plans to push for a new natural gas pipeline from the North Slope, above the Arctic Circle. The administration has approved Shell's plan to conduct limited oil drilling in the Chukchi Sea this year, enraging environmentalists, some of whom plan to protest outside the GLACIER meeting on Monday.

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